Women register for the Mississippi IWY Conference in Jackson. The state’s feminists and antifeminists came together at the July 1977 conference. Courtesy, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Jean Muirhead, a Jackson attorney and former state senator, spoke on the legal status of women at the October 1972 meeting of ERA supporters to form a coalition for a ratification campaign. Courtesy, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Cora Norman, AAUW leader and ERA supporter, recalled that ERA supporters were “flabbergasted” at the accusations made against them as a group by the conservative coalition. Courtesy, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Definitions:

ratify an amendment: approve an addition to the constitution of a state or a nation. In this case, the authors refer to approving an amendment to the U.S. Constitution which requires approval by three fourths of the states.

ratify: to approve; make valid or legally operative; confirm.

unconstitutional: Not according to or consistent with the constitution of a state or a nation; contrary to the U.S. Constitution.

rescind: to take back; to do away with.

advocate (noun): one that argues for, defends, or recommends a cause or proposal.

discriminate: to make a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing on the basis of the group, class, or category to which the person or thing belongs, rather than according to actual merit.

suffrage: the right to vote. In the United States, the term is often associated with the women’s movement to win voting rights.

feminist: one that thinks women should have the same economic, social, and political rights as men. In this article, the feminists referred to supported the ERA.

antifeminist: in this case, one that favored traditional ideas about woman’s nature and social role and opposed changes that the feminist movement has brought about or was proposing. The authors refer to one that opposes ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in order to preserve the government’s right to make separate and different laws for women and men; one that regarded the modern feminist movement as an assault on the traditional role of women.

The Equal Rights Amendment and Mississippi

By Marjorie Julian Spruill and Jesse Spruill Wheeler

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article

This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

—full text, the Equal Rights Amendment

A primary goal of the modern women’s rights movement which began
in the late 1960’s was the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). This
amendment was first proposed in 1923, just three years after American
women gained the right to vote through the Nineteenth Amendment.
Its earliest proponents, members of the National Woman’s Party, were
aware that receiving the vote did not end all the lingering injustices
faced by the women of the nation. These women, and ERA supporters
in the 1960s and 1970s, believed that adding the ERA to the United States
Constitution would make any laws denying equality to women unconstitutional
and thus sweep away all of the old laws that they considered unfair
to women.

One
of the most important victories in the history of the modern women’s
rights movement came in 1972 when Congress approved the ERA by overwhelming
majorities. The House approved it in October 1971 by 354 to 23, and
in March 1972 the Senate approved it by 84 to 8. When the
ERA was submitted to the states for ratification, there was a mad scramble
to ratify — fourteen states ratified within a week. Within
three months, twenty states had ratified. By the end of 1972,
thirty states had approved it — and only eight more were needed
for ratification.

The
ERA was not ratified, however, as it never met the requirement established
by framers of the Constitution that amendments must be approved by three
fourths of the states. In 1978 Congress extended the original
1979 ERA deadline to 1982, but when the new deadline came and went,
the ERA remained three states short of ratification. Mississippi did
not ratify the ERA. In fact, the Mississippi Legislature was the
only state legislature which never voted on the amendment.

That
the ERA had such widespread support in the 1970s seems somewhat surprising
today, given that the amendment proved to be unsuccessful. Unlike the
amendment granting woman suffrage which was slow to be approved by Congress
but was ratified in 1920 a little more than a year after being submitted
to the states, the ERA enjoyed overwhelming support in 1972 —
only to begin almost immediately a long slide to eventual failure.

STOP ERA

The
growing activism against the ERA owed much to Phyllis Schlafly of Illinois,
who founded STOP ERA (Stop Taking Our Privileges) in October 1972.
Schlafly enjoyed particular success in the South, where large numbers
of southern conservatives including evangelical Protestants regarded
the modern feminist movement as an assault on the traditional role of
women which many regarded as divinely ordained.

Schlafly was strongly supported by conservative women in Mississippi
who fought ERA partly in order to preserve the government’s right
to make separate and different laws for women and men. They did not
believe in the “equality” of the sexes if this meant “sameness,”
and many upheld the idea of male dominance, especially of the household.
During the battle over the ERA in Mississippi, Ellen Campbell, a state
leader of STOP ERA, declared: “Man is the head of the home.
In the societal order of things, he is above the women.”
They believed that, if the ERA was ratified, women would lose many privileges
including being supported by husbands and being exempt from military
service.

In
addition, conservative women in the state shared Schlafly’s distrust
of the federal government and were very concerned that, given the vague
language of the ERA, enforcement would be left to judges who would decide
how laws must be changed to comply with the amendment.

Peggy
Rayborn of Hattiesburg, an officer in Women for Constitutional Government,
said that the wording of the ERA was “so simple it is open to just any
kind of interpretation by the courts” and pointed out that “the
Civil Rights Act is an excellent example of what can happen.”
“The main result of the passage of the ERA would be to transfer
jurisdiction of all laws pertaining to women and the family from the
states to the federal government and courts. Considering the mess they
make of everything, this would be catastrophic. Besides, the government
has enough power and interferes too much as it is.”

ERA advocates

On the other hand, most modern women’s rights advocates, including
ERA advocates in Mississippi, believed that most differences in the
sexes, particularly in aptitudes and attitudes, were the result of
“nurture more than nature” — in other words, the result
of societal influences rather than inborn traits. They believed
that the government should not be encouraging the continuance of traditional
divisions in the roles of men and women by making separate laws for
the two sexes. They argued that women should be free to choose
whatever careers they preferred as individuals and that decisions regarding
family life, such as which parent took on primary responsibility for
taking care of children, should be decided by the family and not by
the government.

ERA
advocates also insisted that existing laws did not give women equality
under the law, particularly regarding access to credit, and that discrimination
against women in education and employment meant that most women earned
far less than most men. They advocated federally supported child
care, arguing that many families, especially single-parent families,
needed that assistance.

In
addition, many ERA advocates believed that women should take on equal
obligations with men in defending their country, though some pointed
out that compulsory military service — the draft — had been
abolished.

In October 1972, ERA supporters met in Jackson and formed a coalition
to prepare for a ratification campaign. The coalition included:
the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the League of Women
Voters (LWV), the Mississippi Nurses Association, the Jackson Women’s
Coalition, the AFL-CIO, National Organization for Women (NOW), and the
Mississippi Hairdressers and Cosmetologists. Jean Muirhead, a
Jackson attorney, and former state senator, spoke on the legal status
of women, and Dr. Connie McCaa, coordinator of the task force on ratification
of the ERA for the Jackson chapter of NOW, discussed the need for the
ERA to improve the economic status of women. House of Representatives
member John Eaves of Hinds County announced his intention of sponsoring
the amendment.

ERA in the legislature

As
the Mississippi Legislature opened in January 1973, the Equal Rights
Amendment was introduced in both chambers. The Senate Constitution
Committee allowed ERA advocates to speak as well as four ERA opponents
from Louisiana who “warn[ed] Mississippi of the dangers”
of the ERA. Representative Betty Jane Long of Meridian was appointed
head of a subcommittee of the House to study the ERA. She also held
hearings on the amendment. But the amendment did not receive the number
of votes necessary to be approved by the committee and reach the full
legislature for a vote.

In 1974 Representative Long’s subcommittee heard more testimony
before a packed house of over 200 people — closely divided between
supporters and opponents — but again the amendment died in committee.
Indeed, in the ten-year period in which the ERA was introduced in the
legislature, it never got out of committee — the only state where
this was the case. By 1974, Bobbye Henley, AAUW leader and Mississippi
ERA Ratification Committee head, acknowledged that the ERA’s chances
in the state were “very, very slim.” For the remaining
years before the deadline, getting the amendment out of committee seemed
to be the best the supporters could hope for.

Unlike
1920, when an all-male legislature debated the woman suffrage amendment,
the Mississippi Legislature that considered the ERA had women members
who played an important role in shaping its response. For several years
there was even a woman occupying the illustrious post of lieutenant
governor — Evelyn Gandy of Hattiesburg. But women legislators
remained few in number and many opposed ratification and seemed to believe
that their constituents expected it of them.

Representative Betty Jane Long and Senator Berta Lee White of Bailey
were the objects of considerable criticism from feminists for their
opposition to the ERA. But Long declared that they would be doing
women no favors by approving the ERA: “If it didn’t do anything
else than draft women into combat service, it would be real hard to
explain to women that you were doing a service for them.”
She also regarded the ERA as unnecessary, and of little interest to
other legislators.

Senator White insisted that women in manufacturing still needed protective
legislation, and that there were no possible gains from ERA worth the
risk of women being drafted. If it were only about equal pay for equal
work, she said “I’d be leading the march.”

ERA
proponent Jo Hollman of NOW and the YWCA said that as long as the women
members were against the ERA, that was a major factor to overcome.

As the most prominent woman politician in the state, Lieutenant Governor
Evelyn Gandy was constantly asked about the ERA, and was very cautious:
in 1976 she was quoted by The Clarion-Ledger as saying: “I
personally favor it. But I don’t believe it is a priority item
for Mississippi women. There are other matters of more importance .
. . such as education and health care.”

In the 1970s and the early 1980s, however, the ERA was a political
land mine not only for Gandy but for politicians male or female who,
in the state’s conservative political climate, had good reason
to tread carefully. In 1979, The Clarion-Ledger attacked
Gandy for “socialism” for supporting ERA. William
Winter, lieutenant governor from 1972 to 1976, and governor from 1980
to 1984, was an open supporter, but recalled later that he was unable
to get any of the committees to send the amendment to the floor.
Like Gandy he was denounced by ERA opponents and also criticized by
supporters who claimed he did not try hard enough.

IWY

There
seemed to be no organized opposition — or any need for it —
until 1977. In that year, Mississippi, along with all the states,
held an International Women’s Year (IWY) Conference sponsored by Congress.
The conferences were viewed as extremely important by feminists and
antifeminists alike, as Congress was asking the women of the nation
for recommendations on what the federal government should do to make
American society a more just society for women. At each state
conference, participants were to adopt a set of resolutions and elect
delegates who would represent their state at a national IWY conference
to be held in Houston, Texas, in November 1977.

At the Mississippi IWY Conference, held in July 1977 in Jackson, the
state’s feminists and antifeminists came together in a clash of
cultures. The group of women’s rights veterans, pro-ERA, who had
been appointed by the U.S. State Department to organize the conference,
publicized it widely. But they were surprised when the conservatives
arrived in numbers that allowed them to dominate the conference and
adopt a strongly anti-ERA, antifeminist set of resolutions and a complete
slate of conservative delegates to send to the national IWY conference.

The conservative coalition, calling itself “Mississippians for
God, Country, and Family,” included many religious conservatives,
encouraged by their churches to attend and defend traditional ideas
about women’s role.

The
conservative participants also included a number of Mississippians well
known for their opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. Dallas
Higgins, the wife of a prominent Ku Klux Klan leader, was among the
delegates elected to represent Mississippi at the national conference.
In contrast, the feminists at the conference included African-American
women well known for their advocacy of civil rights as well as women’s
rights in Mississippi. One of them, Jesse Moseley, was elected
earlier by the feminist organizers to chair the state IWY Commission
and the conference.

The conference made it clear how sharply polarized Mississippians were
on the ERA and women’s rights issues. Feminists felt demonized
by the conservatives who were indeed harsh in their portraits of ERA-supporters,
denouncing them as communists who were anti-God and anti-family.
Since many of the ERA supporters were married with children and active
in their churches, they were amazed. AAUW leader Cora Norman recalled
later that she and many of the feminists were “flabbergasted”
at the accusations made against them as a group.

The
conference also seemed to unify and motivate both feminists and conservatives
and to inspire each side to greater activism. It also made Mississippians,
including the press and the politicians, even more aware of the strength
and numbers of conservative women in the state which meant that the
IWY conference probably did more harm than good for the ERA’s prospects
in the state.

Deadline extended

When in 1979 Congress extended the deadline for ratification by three
more years, Mississippi politicians were not pleased. Senator
John Stennis helped sponsor an amendment to it saying that Congress
could not extend the deadline without allowing states to rescind their
ratification. Both he and Mississippi’s other senator, James
Eastland, voted against the extension. But even some pro-ERA politicians
in the state, including William Winter, were critical of extension.

As
the final year approached, Mississippi feminists continued to show the
colors and to campaign annually for passage of the amendment. In July
1981, NOW members in Hattiesburg staged a “countdown rally,”
one of 180 such rallies around the nation, and a “walk-a-thon”
to raise money for the final push for ratification. The money they raised,
however, was by their own choice designated for ratification campaigns
in other states, as Mississippi and national NOW leaders considered
it a waste to spend much on Mississippi.

On
June 30, 1982, the deadline for the ERA expired. Ironically, as
noted by journalist Bill Minor in a column for The Clarion-Ledger,
“the day after the Great Threat (The Equal Rights Amendment, of
course) was over,” Governor Winter appointed the first woman
to the State Supreme Court in the 175 year history of the state —
Judge Lenore Prather. The same day, the U.S. Supreme Court declared
that Mississippi could no longer run a state-supported institution of
higher learning that was open to women only (Mississippi University
for Women). Though the Mississippi legislature had taken no action
on the ERA, opportunities were opening up to women and laws that treated
men and women differently were being challenged and often overturned.

In Mississippi, as elsewhere in the nation, ERA supporters continued
their efforts. State supporters of the ERA immediately introduced
a state equal rights amendment, believing that they might have a better
chance now that this was solely a state issue. As Bobbye Henley put
it, “I told myself that this time we don’t have to argue
about federal intervention and we don’t have to talk about the
draft.” But again conservatives, including ERA opponent Dot Ward,
argued against it on the grounds that women had all rights they need.
Said Ward, “We have had ten years and three months of ERA and
I say it’s time to put it to rest.” The state equal
rights amendment — like the ERA — died in committee.

On March 22, 1984, the Mississippi Legislature, without fanfare and
with no opposition, ratified the Nineteenth Amendment — something
that thirty-six other states had done half a century earlier. Mississippi’s
ratification had no actual effect since Mississippi women had been given
the right to vote through the action of other states back in 1920.
Some interpreted this as a gesture to show that legislators were not
hostile to women’s rights in the wake of the ERA defeat.

This belated approval mattered little to feminists in Mississippi and
throughout the nation, however. In their eyes, a poor showing
on the suffrage amendment and the fact that Mississippi lawmakers blocked
the ERA before it ever came to a vote, gave Mississippi one of the worst
records on women’s rights in the nation. By 1982 it was clear
that women in the state and the nation were very divided in what they
thought was best for American women. And though the ERA seemed
dead — at least for the foreseeable future — the issues
that surfaced during the battle over ratification would be debated in
Mississippi and the nation for years to come.

Marjorie Julian Spruill, Ph.D., is associate vice chancellor for
institutional planning and research professor of history at Vanderbilt
University. Previously she was professor of history at the University
of Southern Mississippi. She is the author of New Women of the New
South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States,
Oxford University Press, 1993. In addition, she has edited several books
on women’s history and co-edited a United States history textbook
with a focus on the South, The South in the History of a Nation:
A Reader.

Jesse Spruill Wheeler, her son and a junior at Hattiesburg
High School, studied Mississippi history while in the ninth grade during
the 2000-2001 school year.

Posted March 2003

Suggestions for further reading:

Boles, Janet K. The Politics of the Equal Rights Amendment: Conflict
and the Decision Process. New York: Longman Press, 1979.

DeHart, Jane Sherron and Donald G. Matthews. Sex, Gender, and the
Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990.